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Thomas Attwood's Lessons in Composition with Mozart

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1973

Daniel Heartz
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Extract

The Attwood papers recently entered the public domain, having been acquired by the British Library. This is fitting, for they constitute a kind of national monument—a vital force that has made itself felt upon English musical thought and training for nearly two centuries. Ever since Attwood brought them back from his period of study with Mozart in Vienna in 1785–7 they have been used repeatedly for teaching purposes, and handed on with reverence from master to disciple (thus escaping total destruction, the usual fate of such documents). Upon Attwood's death in 1838 the papers passed to his pupil John Goss, who had already published the Minuet in C major, perhaps the best known of Attwood's pieces rewritten by Mozart, in his Introduction to Harmony and Thorough Bass (1833).

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 100 , 1973 , pp. 175 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Thomas Attwoods Theorie- und Kompositiotustudien bei Mozart, vorgelegt von Erich Hertzmann und Cecil B. Oldman, fertiggestellt von Daniel Heartz und Alfred Mann (W. A. Mozart, Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, X/30/1), Cassel &c., 1965. This edition, referred to familiarly as the ‘Neue Mozart Ausgabe’, will henceforth be abbreviated to NMA.Google Scholar

2 Heartz and Mann, Kritische Bericht to NMA, Cassel &c., 1969. An addition to the critical commentary, inscribed to Cecil B. Oldman's memory, appeared in Heartz, ‘Ein Fund in Berkeleys Einstein-Nachlass’, Mozart-Jahrbuch 1968/70, Salzburg, 1970, pp. 257–63.Google Scholar

3 NMA, p. 20.Google Scholar

4 Letter to his father, 14 May 1778: The Letters of Mozart and his Family, transl. and ed. Emily Anderson, 2nd edn., London, 1966, ii. 538–9; cf. NMA, critical commentary, pp. 57–58. Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht points out that the writing of minuets was a normal part of compositional training at this period, and served Mozart himself as well as his various pupils; see his Versuch über die Wiener Klassik (Beihefte zum Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, xii), Wiesbaden, 1972, pp. 24–25.Google Scholar

5 See Finscher, Ludwig, Studien zur Geschichte des Streichquartetts, i: Die Entstehung des klassischen Streichquartetts. Von den Vorformen zur Grundlegung durch Joseph Haydn (Saarbrücker Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, iii), Cassel &c., 1974, especially the chapter ‘Haydn als Klassiker des Streichquartetts’, pp. 129–36.Google Scholar

6 The eight-bar piece in G major at the bottom left of Plate I, also in Attwood's hand, bears no relationship to the Minuet.Google Scholar

7 Published as an appendix in NMA, pp. 257–75.Google Scholar

8 NMA, pp. 155–6 (lair copies), pp. 156–7 (orchestration).Google Scholar

9 NMA, p. 197; facsimile of the original sheet, ibid., p. xxii.Google Scholar